“War of Civilizations”

Recently I was asked if I was aware of the Free State Project, and here’s my response:

Yes, I am aware of that particular group and, too, of the wider “secession” movement that exists amongst the fundamentalist Christian right. Many secularists and mainstream Americans are simply refusing to believe that such radicalism can exist in our country, but it does. And, from what I’ve observed, it is this right-wing Christian-fundamentalism that the Republican Party has tapped into to amass electoral power. Moreover, I think that the Republican’s “Southern Strategy,” now infused with strands of the fundamentalist Christian-right, while electorally successful, has the potential to tear our nation apart. As an example, like with the Free State Project, here’s another right-wing organization that advocates secession:

CHRISTIAN EXODUS
ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government. It is evident that the U.S. Constitution has been abandoned under our current federal system, and the efforts of Christian activism to restore our Godly republic have proven futile over the past three decades. The time has come for Christians to withdraw our consent from the current federal government and re-introduce the Christian principles once so predominant in America to a sovereign State like South Carolina. [ http://www.christianexodus.org/ ]

The president of that organization writes the following:

Mr. Jim Taylor and Mr. Cory Burnell founded ChristianExodus.org in November 2003 as a response to the moral degeneration of our nation and the lack of any determination by the Republican Party to return our nation to its Constitutional moors.

Now, this is but one organization, but clearly the fundamentalist Christian-right sees their electoral futures tied to one party, the Republican Party. And these groups would not be incorrect in presuming that they’ve been actively courted by the Republican Party, especially by the Southern strand of that Party. Again, I’m afraid that I and of my fellow secularists have been caught with our pants down on this issue, and now need to assert the rock-solid separation between church and state that MUST exist, or we risk a “war of civilizations” (euphemistically referred to as the “culture wars”) in our own backyard.